Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Detail Contents
- About the Editor
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Permissions
- Introduction
- 1 Multi-Tiered Marriage
- 2 Pluralism and Decentralization in Marriage Regulation
- 3 Marriage and the Law
- 4 Unofficial Family Law
- 5 Covenant Marriage Laws
- 6 New York’s Regulation of Jewish Marriage
- 7 Political Liberalism, Islamic Family Law, and Family Law Pluralism
- 8 Multi-Tiered Marriages in South Africa
- 9 Ancient and Modern Boundary Crossings Between Personal Laws and Civil Law in Composite India
- 10 The Perils of Privatized Marriage
- 11 Canadian Conjugal Mosaic
- 12 Marriage Pluralism in the United States
- 13 Faith in Law? Diffusing Tensions Between Diversity and Equality
- 14 The Frontiers of Marital Pluralism
- Index
- References
10 - The Perils of Privatized Marriage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Detail Contents
- About the Editor
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Permissions
- Introduction
- 1 Multi-Tiered Marriage
- 2 Pluralism and Decentralization in Marriage Regulation
- 3 Marriage and the Law
- 4 Unofficial Family Law
- 5 Covenant Marriage Laws
- 6 New York’s Regulation of Jewish Marriage
- 7 Political Liberalism, Islamic Family Law, and Family Law Pluralism
- 8 Multi-Tiered Marriages in South Africa
- 9 Ancient and Modern Boundary Crossings Between Personal Laws and Civil Law in Composite India
- 10 The Perils of Privatized Marriage
- 11 Canadian Conjugal Mosaic
- 12 Marriage Pluralism in the United States
- 13 Faith in Law? Diffusing Tensions Between Diversity and Equality
- 14 The Frontiers of Marital Pluralism
- Index
- References
Summary
Governments around the world continue to struggle with how to accommodate religious minorities in an increasingly pluralistic society. In February 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury called for a “plural jurisdiction” in which Muslims could choose to resolve family disputes in religious tribunals or in British courts. A firestorm of controversy erupted in response. The Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, protested: “It would be impossible to introduce a tradition like Shari’a into [the] corpus [of British law] without fundamentally affecting [the] integrity” of British law. Prominent Islamic scholar Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra called these fears “Islamophobic,” but observed, “[T]he vast majority of Muslims do not want to see a parallel … system for Muslims in our society.”
Lawmakers responded to the Archbishop’s comments. Nick Clegg, Britain’s Liberal Democrat leader, stated: “Equality before the law is part of the glue that binds our society together. We cannot have a situation where there is one law for one person and different laws for another.” The Prime Minister proclaimed that “British law should apply in this country, based on British values.” On the heels of the Archbishop’s comments, British authorities reported that 17,000 women were victims of honor-related violence annually, raising caution flags about how women, and children, will fare in such a system – the subject of this chapter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Marriage and Divorce in a Multi-Cultural ContextMulti-Tiered Marriage and the Boundaries of Civil Law and Religion, pp. 253 - 283Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011